


There but for Fortune: Gellert's Legacy and the Soldiers of the Dark Lord

by verus_janus (Methleigh)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-24
Updated: 2012-05-24
Packaged: 2017-11-05 22:29:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Methleigh/pseuds/verus_janus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was my presentation at the Aeternitas convention in New Hampshire.<br/>My intent in this presentation is to demonstrate the idealistic roots of the so-called Dark side of the Wizarding Wars and to show that the war is not comprised of angels and demons, but of humans who believe in ideals, despite the sacrifice of honor that war demands as people kill and people die.  The honour and sacrifice of those who have lost a war remains with its children, and does not die simply because their ideals were warped to make them seem despicable.  Gellert Grindelwald lost a war of ideals and was reviled, but his followers and heirs lived on, and naturally rose again as Death Eaters under the burden of the revulsion of Wizarding society, and perhaps their own to some degree, for they too named themselves 'Dark.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	There but for Fortune: Gellert's Legacy and the Soldiers of the Dark Lord

**Introduction**

My intent in this presentation is to demonstrate the idealistic roots of the so-called Dark side of the Wizarding Wars and to show that the war is not comprised of angels and demons, but of humans who believe in ideals, despite the sacrifice of honor that war demands as people kill and people die. The honor and sacrifice of those who have lost a war remains with its children, and does not die simply because their ideals were warped to make them seem despicable. Gellert Grindelwald lost a war of ideals and was reviled, but his followers and heirs lived on, and naturally rose again as Death Eaters under the burden of the revulsion of Wizarding society, and perhaps their own to some degree, for they too named themselves 'Dark.'

I am a Death Eater, not because I revel in evil and darkness, but because I genuinely believe in the freedom to do one's best, and I believe in this sincerely and ardently. I am for the seemingly magical made real. I am in favor of the interesting over the mundane, and so are you, whether you realize it or not. You would not read a series of seven weighty tomes culminating, after minutiae of deliberation, in the purchase of a second-hand dishwasher.

This topic is important to me. It is the reason I read the books, and it is the reason I write. I don't know how you came to the world of Harry Potter, but I was excited when the books first came out. I grew up on British boarding school stories from the 20s and 30s. I was excited by advance descriptions of Harry Potter. My school stories would meet Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in a new series for a new time!

But I was disappointed by the second book its focus following the trio. I let the series slide until the seventh book was due to be released. I stumbled upon the writing of onlynanda, who wrote Snape as a double agent genuinely loyal to both sides. And I read and thought, talked to her and wondered.

And I realised the series was mine. Snape's story was my story, and the story of the Death Eaters was my story, despite the minimalism with which they are painted and the vilification to which they are subjected. For once in the world, they have the same cause as I. And the cause is not racism. That is a red herring inserted simply to make them 'evil' so the 'good' side may fight against them. It does not make sense. The cause is the right to reach for the stars, beyond the stars. The cause is to dare and dare and dare again. The cause is to be one's best, unhampered for the sake of control or homogeneity, even when these are presented as protection and equality. The cause is the right to challenge Death itself, and to eat and consume it.

I am a Death Eater because I once believed I was fighting for just this. I wear a Dark Mark because I joined the Death Eaters in what I refer to, inaccurately, as my misspent youth. I say inaccurately, because a youth spent in gaining knowledge, hard-won, is not exactly misspent, no matter how objectively inadvisable one's activities. But though in retrospect my cause was not the one to which I gave myself, it does not matter. I would not now do what I did, but from that time I learned what it was to follow a glowing dream, what it was to fight a war, and what it was to lose a war.

But one man's dream is another's nightmare, and vice versa. And after a war, the losing side is vilified. There is no other way to justify the sacrifices made by the victors save for them to cast the losers as evil and instigators of darkness. They must be evil for the victors to be good. During the war, each side casts the other as such, but after the war, the victors are universally believed. The ideology is unimportant. Indeed, one's own dream, brought into systematic reality, may well become one's own nightmare.

I wanted to be sure, before I gave this talk, that I truly believed in ideals as justification no matter what the cost, and I read a harrowing book to this end - Jonathan Littel's The Kindly Ones. It was 2000 dense pages of what are likely the most monstrous deeds ever perpetrated, from the inside, and only barely written as fiction. Harrowing is the correct word. But I also knew that the narrator could have easily been me, if I had believed that cause was my golden cause. It is so easy to be misled. And yet I still believed in ideals as justification and a basis for ongoing forgiveness.

The Harry Potter books define a war.

Everyone who fights does so for ideals. It is the fact that one has ideals that matters. It is the experience of fighting that matters, the experience of impetus and momentum, of being a conspiratorial architect of the new world, of mourning and alienation when friends are lost or when they lose themselves. I have embraced those to whom I stood diametrically opposed, and we have shared this common experience, fighting for ideals.

And the first imperative is to do your best, to stand for what you believe, determining this as best you can. And as long as you do this, though all the world against you, then you are forgiven if you are wrong, not by that world, perhaps, but you may forgive yourself within your heart.

**There but for Fortune (Phil Ochs)**   
_Show me a prison  
Show me a jail  
Show me a prison man  
Whose face is growing pale  
And I'll show you a young man  
With so many reasons why  
And there but for fortune  
May go you or I  
You or I_

**A Proposition**

Folk and faerie tales are stories of the triumph of good over evil. The innocent children, or innocent princess and handsome prince defeat the evil witch who only wishes them harm. Books, shows, and movies are written with the same theme. Lord of the Rings sets the Fellowship against Sauron. 

Harry Potter sets the Order of the Phoenix against Voldemort.

This is comfortable and reassuring. It is deemed morally positive. Is it not obvious that good should triumph over evil?

History is told the same way: a progression of moral wars, a panoply of heroes and villains. Dumbledore vanquished Gellert Grindelwald. New heroes and villains arose. The Order of the Phoenix fought The Dark Lord. Heroes were for the side of the angels. Villains were consigned to eternal condemnation. Think of Viktor, incensed at what he saw as 'Grindelwald's sign' signifying support for dark magic.

Yet, who decides what is good?

It is impossible to prove logically that good is better than evil, because the distinction relies on perspective and judgement. They are not objective. They do not exist pristine and beautiful, objects unto themselves. They rely on context and interpretation. They are subject to point of view. 

What really happens in a war? 

One might delicately say that people are killed. A war. So many lost, so many dead. Ones friends and comrades, those one has relied upon, those that gave encouragement, those in whom one has seen wonder, those for whom one has felt pride, joy, poignancy. Gone. Think of Evan Rossier, killed in a running street battle. Did he not have friends to whom he represented the world?

What really happens in a war?

More realistically: people kill one another. It is said: Thou shalt not kill. But both sides kill. Thus neither can say: 'Killing is evil' without condemning itself. Each side has reasons and beliefs for which it fights, or each side believes it needs land and resources. They truly believe this. They fight for the future. They fight for their children. Perhaps they fight, ironically, for peace. That is not funny, or even uncommon. Every war involving invasion has a side which fights for peace. Sometimes they win; sometimes they lose. And ultimately, they fight for power and authority to build their vision, and control to protect that power. The Dark Lord fights for power, and the Ministry fights for control.

Each side must justify killing to themselves, because they do not want to kill. They do not want to be evil. No one sets out to evil, much as we would like to believe it. They set out with the light of Cause in their eyes, to which they sacrifice themselves. They cannot kill and remain good to themselves unless their reasons override their morality.

To do this, each side needs to vilify the other. One side needs to invent 'Dark Magic' as opposed to sanctioned magic and invoke the Statute of Wizarding Secrecy as an excuse to persecute those who challenge their control. The other cries 'Betrayal,' and invents new classes of enemies - blood traitors, halfbloods, mudbloods as targets hindering their ascendancy.

Each side's reasons and causes must be so strong that they are unquestionable. Their soldiers (who are doing the actual killing) must not doubt them. The families of soldiers and their friends and neighbors must not despise those who have killed. Soldiers sacrifice their honour for the greater good, and in order for their good to be great it must oppose evil. Foes are too complex when their hearts and hands and minds work for what they also believe to be good. Each side must oppose absolute evil - those who kill simply to destroy, to harm, to ruin, out of unreasoning hate. Each must oppose the evil witch of the faerie tale. We see little of these reactions in the families and friends of the Death Eaters, and nothing at all of the perception of those of the earlier war. The Aurors who oppose them with equally 'dark' magic, however, are honored and take the most esteemed of career paths. 

What really happens after a war? 

One side has won. It then proclaims, publishes, and promotes its reasons and justifications unopposed. It enforces its righteousness and goodness. It writes its history as justified, with all its ideals for its greater good raised on high. It writes the history of the losing side as well. It writes its opponents as blindly brutal, simply evil for the sake of hate, ruin, death and destruction. That is what it means to win a war.

And there is proof! Its enemies have killed. They have opposed the greater good of the winning side. They are evil and have done evil acts. Killing is, after all, evil, unless it is for a greater good. As those who win the war hold ideas that are now ascendant, their enemies and their motives become despicable. 

But this is all subjective - subject to point of view and force of arms. 

And this is the place where we find ourselves in the case of the Wizarding Wars as portrayed in the books, not just in the lives and times of the 'Trio Era' but even at the beginning of the Marauder area, and even earlier, in the glimpses we see of the Dark Lord's own schooldays. Gellert Grindelwald, his armies, his soldiers, his champions, his followers, those who had given their hearts to his ideals - all had been defeated, vanquished and made despicable. The ministry (which controls the press,) the schools, and all the world are against them. Dumbledore had his hand and will in all of these, and he was the one to take Gellert's wand and imprison him. Personally. And one may only guess to what degree personal matters were responsible for Dumbledore's own convictions, promotion and enforcement aside. And the voice of the books subscribes to his ideas without reservation.

Think of a war in which people killed and other people died, and choose a side.

How do you know you are right? Before you say it is self-evident, you must think that every soldier of every war on every side has always believed himself justified, has always believed himself right and fighting for the greater good, a cause to which he sacrifices his usual morality. How would you know you were right? In the face of propaganda, national interests, beliefs and even ideals of justice, fairness and charity, how can anyone know he is right?

One can never know. It is your duty to learn the soul of society, the movement of history, the emotional impact of words. You must know your own principles and conscience. 

It is your duty to say a holy 'yes' to heroism. It is you duty to say 'no,' I believe that this and this are wrong. If you do nothing and understand nothing, whatever evil befalls the world is your fault, because you allow it to happen.

Do you think there is no evil, that no innocents are killed, that heinous acts of offense or defense do not take place? We all know the adage that all it takes for evil to prevail is for good men (and women) to do nothing. How much better to join the world of heroes, to bring about a better world.

One must stand, and one must have conviction. But one must be aware that one may be wrong. Those one opposes take the same chance. One must oppose them, but the world is not made of princes and princesses against evil witches. It is a clash of convictions. One may only choose one's convictions as best one can. And it is your aegis to forgive your opponents, who do the same, even as you stand against them.

**A Descriptive Metaphor**

I want you to engage in an exercise in imagination, without thinking of the books for a moment. Place yourself into the following scenario. What would you think? What would you do? Perhaps more pertinently: What would you want to do?

Imagine a society, where... Imagine that you can read, or that you can use the Internet, learned yes, but natural and close as breathing. And that those with organic or learning difficulties may also benefit from computers and the written word.

Think of the weight of thought and innovation that is open and waiting within the infinite variety of websites and the collections of research and knowledge. You have the ability to access it at will!

Think of the array of small delights of characters in books, glimpses of recognition and charm, turns of phrase that lead to new perceptions, new exquisite ideas. Think of the pure creative and interactive wonders that are passed from virtual hand to hand, friend to friend.

Think of yourself in loss or sorrow, or even stunned by world-changing joy. Think of the times you have sought comfort or insight, or truth to pass through mental or emotional minefields. Think of the clues and pathways, the knowledge you found in books, or online that others gleaned passing before you.

Think of those you have met, how they connect you to the world, how they bless and keep you. Think of the things you do for one another, despite distance. Think of the things which keep them close - letters in other times, and now email, chat programs, texts and websites of communion.

Think of the critical information that comes to you through the Internet - politics, local news and distant news which affect comrades, directions, warnings, facts and formulae, tools for banking and the whole financial world. Think of such simple things as signs. Emergency Exit. Danger. Ingredient labels on food.

Think of the ways that you yourself contribute, share and keep your thoughts, your writing, your art, your accomplishments, your work history. Do you keep a journal,a portfolio, a binder of important papers, a wallet of identification? Have you ever sent a proposal? Do you have a journal online, an online shop, a business, an art page? Do you create or share content?

Now imagine that all this is only possible, not by economics, but by simple capacity of understanding and temperament, perhaps. Imagine the vast majority -millions of people, otherwise whole and well - are inherently prevented by partaking of all these wonders.

Take a second to fix such a world in your mind.

Now imagine that those of you who read, who use the Internet, live under a rigorous government of others who jealously guard all bright capacities and genius. They hide all knowledge of your talent, art and skill, and even your joy and delight from those who cannot use it. This is not done for your safety, which is not at risk from them. It is not done for their safety, because they blunder through haphazard activities and inventions. And these are far more dangerous than a mere knowledge of the existence of superior methods and organization could ever be. The only explanation is sheer control of products of your hand, heart and brain.

There are no elections, no possibility of systemic change.

They attempt to segregate you from the world that needs your knowledge and brilliance. They try to gather you in ghettoes where you may read approved books and look at approved Internet content, but only if you do not share it outside. They divide your reading material into that which they control and that which is free, and accessing the latter becomes high crime.

Those who can read and use computers are segregated for generations, and develop their own hierarchies, and infrastructures, their own communication and transportation methods. They develop traditions, oaths, foods, phrases and words. They embrace and invent their own games and music. Control and promotion of segregation keep them completely separate from those struggling and bumbling through generations without them, until their very beings are alien.

Children are forbidden to read or use computers except at school, where they live apart from family and friends who cannot read. Very young children are allowed to keep their own records, as long as they have no books or computers. But as soon as they reach the age of 11 they are under such strict surveillance they may not write one word of their own hearts, may not read one word of another's outside of school.

And there are punishments for infractions, even for children. There are vast resources dedicated to surveillance and enforcement, and surveillance is universal and enforcement swift. If you open the wrong book, or stumble upon the wrong website, even in error, it will be known and the authorities will be at your door. The only hope for a measure of freedom, and that only as an adult, is to write books oneself before they become prohibited, as they surely will be, simply because you have written them.

To resist is to label oneself guilty of highest treason.

And judgement! 

There a great edifice of punishment and any within its walls are tortured with the most rigorous relentless assault imaginable, designed to wrest from one one's very soul and mind. And this is whither one is rushed pre-trial when's one guilt or innocence is not yet determined!

Should you be taken, there are courts with no lawyers, no defense, arbitrary procedures. You would be held in court in chains or cages, pleading for your life and mind with the latter already seriously jeopardised.

There is no help from outside, from friends or family, for the risks are too great. There is no possibility of becoming a refugee, for the system embraces all the world.

Imagine yourself in this world as follows:

You are talented, brilliant, but already branded as undesirable from your school days. You are still free, still sound, but you are alone. You can still laugh, can still assemble tactics. You are still charismatic - Magic. You are still proud of yourself and all the sheer potential wonder of yourself and all the brilliant talented children who will come. Why should you hide your light? Why should you be subjugated?

What would you do?

What would you want to do?

**Call to Arms**

Gellert... laughing!... won the hearts and minds of the brightest and best, who knew what they suffered, what subjugation cost them. Gellert raised an army against these things - an army of those who wanted freedom to grow and shine, who had talent and power and self-confidence. And he lost. He was vanquished and imprisoned in solitary confinement forever more in his own great empty fortress. His army was broken. He was named the greatest evil the world had ever known.

What does it mean to lose a war?

War is born of dreams.

Oh, not entirely. In the end war is simply orders, obedience, struggle in mud and landscape. In the end it is a scrabble for basic tools and a weariness of being far from home, but in one's heart, in one's pocket, a soldier carries dreams.

A soldier's children carry even stronger dreams. For they hold the pride and faith and fervour that sustains him. They hold all he has taught and all he has shown by his sacrifice for those very dreams.

When the leaders are shackled and imprisoned, when they are reviled and cursed, when the victors become liberators... for the victors always become liberators - there is no other way to justify the suffering of their own side... after the fighting, do the soldiers say: "We fought for nothing, we are chaff and the worst of men. Thank you. Thank you for liberating us from our dreams."?

No.

After the war is lost, after the fighting is over, where do the dreams go?  
They wait, in one's heart, in one's pocket, a secret that whispers: "You were right." If one fought for ideals and nothing has changed, nothing is different, except that the persecution and repression has intensified, then war does not end. It is not over.

No, soldiers remember and their children remember with secret conviction even in their public shame.

Wizards were required to segregate themselves, to hide their power and culture from all the world. The brilliant were punished if they chose to shine. Punishment was life-long torture and imprisonment, and execution was the destruction of one's soul and heart.

 

After the war, these jails and torture and murders remained and had been strengthened. Their keepers and upholders were the victors, the liberators, the saviours of the world. After all, they won the war. History is written by the victors, and the losers are vilified.

Those who dreamt of a world where they could fulfill themselves, where their children could be proud: these were the ones that lost the war.

What does that mean?

It means that after Gellert was vanquished, and imprisoned in his tower, it means those children remembered; it means they inherited their parents broken dreams, nursed them to health in memorial. It means that even as they were cast as villains, they rose as heroes to themselves and to their compatriots.

And the lost children of Gellert's soldiers, still proud, still bewildered that their very dreams could be betrayed, that the travesty their parents had fought against still remained...

Is it any surprise they joined a new resistance? Death Eaters. And what are Death Eaters after all but the champions of immortality. They did not laud death. They wished to vanquish it. And if they also dealt it, to them it was just an extension of the war.

**Forgiveness and Active Pride**

The Harry Potter series rests on a basis of condemnation of the so-called Dark side, but when they are examined in terms of rational goals and ideals, they become human, even heroes, fighting against nightmare, for a future for their children.

I would hold that condemnation is misplaced, even a travesty of itself, when it is applied to a struggle for ideals. If people - wizards - stand truly, fight and sacrifice themselves, offer their honour and lives because they believe in freedom and justice, and strive to bring about the beautiful new world, then condemnation is as unjustified as it would be for any who are called heroes.

All anyone can do - the very best they can do is to determine their beliefs and to stand for them, fight for them, protect them, sacrifice life and heart to bring them to be. This deserves honour, admiration and respect.

When ideals are carried thus, with resolve and determination, there will come clashes with established power, sometimes as strong as war. And in war people kill, and people die. Dire actions are taken.

Add to this that ideals are sometimes misplaced, though one believes with all one's mind. The results may be terrible. As Ollivander says, they may be terrible, but Great.

They should be forgiven.

And if you say a holy 'yes' to heroism; if you say 'no,' I believe that this and this are wrong; if you control to pain, to death, the bent of your own days, then you are forgiven. And this is true even if you are wrong, even if your deeds seem 'dark,' even if you are reviled or cursed by allies or foes.

And moreover, when you believe and stand, you may forgive yourself, and you will live in perpetual forgiveness, perpetual innocence, though all the world may be against you. And every single moment, every single act, will be pure. 

And it will be adventure.

The whole world awaits, and all the ebb and tide of future history, and you may change and bend it, proud, no matter what may come. And pride is a virtue, because you cannot be proud unless you do your best. Death Eaters represent a clarion defiance of mundanity in favor of Magic. Even though there are great potential costs, and you though you may be wrong, you may also be right, and it is worth it. The future will someday be everything.

**There but for Fortune (Phil Ochs)**   
_Show me a prison  
Show me a jail  
Show me a prison man  
Whose face is growing pale  
And I'll show you a young man  
With so many reasons why  
And there but for fortune  
May go you or I  
You or I_


End file.
